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Friday, May 5, 2017

Be Careful Setting a Time Standard

I love helping people.  It's one of my favorite things.

One example came up over the weekend I wanted to share with you all.

Sunday night after the Omega tournament, someone wanted to go home and work right away on uploading some videos of recorded matches throughout the Omega tournament.

I gave him some sage advice based on my learning experiences as a Tournament Director:

I told him not to race home and stay up late trying to get the videos ready right away.  I suggested that he take his time - still do them this week of course - but not rush and stress himself out that night trying to get them online as soon as was humanly possible by staying up late.

Here's what I learned as a Tournament Director:  When we work hard/fast to get things done for others, people will tend to expect those same things in the same time period.  And when that time limit slips, people start to complain or ask a lot of questions.  Sounds like something you may have already experienced in life, I bet.


I was preparing things right away after tournament weekends and then posting them as soon as I could on the Omega website and Facebook.  Updated standings, uploading photos, writing the article, etc were completed and then posted right away, usually on Mondays, Tuesday at the latest.

At times, work was busy and so I had no choice but delay posting the results, standings, and photos until Wednesday. Maybe Thursday.

And by Wed, I'm already getting several inquiries.  Where are the pictures?  What happened to the photos?  Did any come out?  When are you going to put them online?

After one tournament, I had to go out of town for work the very next week.  By Thursday I was getting questions about the standings and photos.  I explained I was out of town and couldn't work on the items yet.

Everyone was fine with the explanations and very cordial about the delay, but it goes to show that my desire and excitement to get the updates to the players quickly after every tournament, led to disappointment from some of the players when I could not post them timely/quickly, as had become routine.

So, I was trying to help my friend out.  Because if he starts to upload the videos every Sunday night after a tournament stop, then that will become a standard expectancy.  The players and fans will get anxious for the videos, and then disappointed/complain when they aren't posted as quick enough like in the past.

So, thought I'd share these lessons with you all as well; it can relate to many aspects of our work and personal lives, too, right?



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